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Ambition

About a year ago I was having lunch with one of my mentors. I asked him what was the biggest mistake that ministers are currently making. He told me that in his opinion the biggest pitfall pastors are making is doing things out of selfish ambition. He said that many ministers are implementing ideas that are not coming from the heart of God, but from themselves. It made me think how many things we are doing in the church world that God doesn’t really care about.

Phil 2:3 “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition”

Obviously God gave us a brain to think and process and make decisisons, but how often are we implementing a good idea instead of a God idea? The difference is huge. If we do things out of our flesh, and our own desires we will get fleshly results. If we make decisions from the Spirit and God’s wisdom we will get Spirit results.

So how do we know if an idea is from God or not?

A man once asked the great evangelist Reinhard Bonnke how he knows an idea he gets is from God or from himself. He said,

“I pray until I reach a state of neutrality, and I come to the place where it doesn’t matter to me either way if it happens, and then i make my decision.”

We need to pray until our good ideas just don’t matter to us any more. We need to pray until all of our selfish ambition is gone and then we can think clearly to make a good decision. If only the entire church would do this! We need to lay down our agenda for heavens agenda. Not all of our ideas are from God. In our pride we think that our ideas are great, and we can be spending all of our effort and time on things that God never told us to do. If an idea is truly from God shouldn’t it bring God sized results? Shouldn’t good fruit come out of it? When I look at the New Testament I don’t see any ministry or outreach that was not productive. The apostles laid down their agenda for heaven’s and the results speak for themselves. Take a look at Psalm 37:4…

Psalm 37:4

“Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

I have heard many Christians quote the last part of this verse without the first part and it loses it’s meaning. The desires of our heart are not going to be God’s desires if we are not taking delight in Him.

We need to take delight in God (through prayer and intimacy) until His desires become our desires, and then we know what we should do.

When we are intimate with Jesus He shares His heart with us. God is infinite in wisdom and He is so creative. He desires to share heavens strategy with us, but it will only come through spending time with Him.

Lord, let us not do ministry and make decisions out of selfish ambition, but let us seek you and lay down our agenda for yours. Let us take delight in you until we have your heart. Amen.